CVE-2026-23988
Rufus is a utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives. Versions 4.11 and below contain a race condition (TOCTOU) in src/net.c during the creation, validation, and execution of the Fido PowerShell script. Since Rufus runs with elevated privileges (Administrator) but writes the script to the %TEMP% directory (writeable by standard users) without locking the file, a local attacker can replace the legitimate script with a malicious one between the file write operation and the execution step. This allows arbitrary code execution with Administrator privileges. This issue has been fixed in version 4.12_BETA.
Package Versions Affected
Automatically patch vulnerabilities without upgrading
CVSS Version



Related Resources
References
https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2026/23xxx/CVE-2026-23988.json, https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/commit/460cc5768aa45be07941b9e4ebc9bee02d282873, https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/releases/tag/v4.12_BETA, https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/security/advisories/GHSA-hcx5-hrhj-xhq9, https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-23988
